Wearing the jacket his son stood trial in, Fred Warmbier addressed a crowd in Cincinnati on Thursday and dispelled some of the myths around his son’s release.

“Dennis Rodman had nothing to do with Otto,” said Warmbier, referencing the high-profile trip the former NBA superstar to North Korea took the same day Otto was released. “It’s a diversion … this is all planned.”

Instead, he said, Otto’s release stemmed from the work of US diplomats in the State Department.

“Last evening we received a very nice phone call from President Trump who told us that Secretary of State Tillerson worked hard to help bring Otto home. We are extremely grateful for their efforts and concern,” Warmbier said.

FILE PHOTO – Otto Warmbier attends a new conference in Pyongyang North Korea

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“They’re brutal. There’s no sense to anything here,” he told Carlson. “They’ve crossed a line with my son, Otto.”

In Cincinnati, Warmbier criticized the world’s approach to North Korea.

“I don’t see a tough approach to North Korea. They’re still able to take Americans hostage and abuse them. They’re still able to be terrorists in the world,” he said.

“It started with prisoners of the Korean war, it extended to the USS Pueblo, and now it extended to my son Otto,” he added, referencing North Korea’s 1968 capture of 83 US Navy sailors and their subsequent torture and captivity.

Warmbier expressed mixed feelings about his son being home.

“I would like to highlight this morning the bittersweet feeling that my family has. Relief that Otto is now home in the arms of those who love him, and anger that he was so brutally treated for so long.”